Human cloning has the potential to cure cancer, replace organs, eliminate infertility, and significantly increase recovery time for patients who have experienced traumatic events. Despite all these groundbreaking benefits, human cloning has not been applied to the medical world. Human cloning has failed to be accepted, because of the ethical issues it presents. Human cloning brings up the issue of religion and whether or not it is allowed throughout different practices. It asks questions such as, do clones have souls, is cloning equivalent to immortality, will it be costly, is it guaranteed to produce results. While the benefits of human cloning are revolutionary, the side-effects can be damaging.
While human cloning can be a very broad topic, it is easy to separate it into two groups: therapeutic human cloning, and reproductive human cloning. Reproductive human cloning is most common of the two. Everyone’s mind immediately goes to Dolly the sheep. In 1996, Dolly became the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell (Pros). After the cloning of Dolly, cloning humans was the next logical step. The basic process of reproductive cloning for animals and humans is essentially the same. It begins with extracting the subjects DNA
…show more content…
The positive effects of human cloning could change the world of medicine, but human cloning is not yet guaranteed. One of the major issues with therapeutic cloning, and reproductive cloning for that matter, is the cost. It could be too expensive for the average man to pay for cloning his heart or curing his daughter’s leukemia. While cost is extremely important, the quality of cloning must be excellent. Scientists and researchers must perfect cloning before actually using it on patients. There is a lot of room for
Now that we are advancing in technology very rapidly, people are starting to wonder if it would be beneficial to clone humans. Some people say that you can literally save a person's life and create an exact replica of person by cloning. But some people say it’s not humane and it would be weird if there is 2 of the exact same person in the world. People are also concerned because nobody knows how these clones will act. We don’t know if the host will be harmed and we also don’t know if the clones will become evil and destroy the world. I believe that we shouldn’t clone humans simply because we don’t have enough information on cloning.
I am writing to address the problem I have with cloning. Therapeutic and Reproductive cloning is a waste of money and time. Why would you pay fifty thousand american dollars to clone something or someone that won’t be an exact copy? Every person or animal in the world is made for a reason, so why make a clone if you’re one of a kind.
As years pass, new discoveries are made through extensive research. These discoveries improve the life expectancy of humans, due to the continuous advancements in medical research and equipment. Infact, a main controversial aspect of medicine that has blown minds is said to be cloning. Cloning is the process of creating a genetic duplicate of an organism. It is divided into two branches: reproductive and therapeutic. Reproductive cloning creates an animal genetically identical to its donor, where it is then placed back into the uterine environment for further development. Therapeutic cloning on the other hand is quiet similar in the sense of formation. However, the resulting cloned cells remain in a lab and are not to be inserted into a female uterus to be nurtured into a fetus. These cells are instead used to treat and prevent diseases and conditions. Over time scientists have put forth all their knowledge and research into creating their very first fully cloned animal. But, until this day, “observers say that no reputable scientist is actively attempting to produce a human clone through reproductive cloning.” (“The Science of Cloning”,1) This procedure remains to be an issue worldwide due to the harm it carries along to reach its beneficial goal.
The idea of finding a way to cure people of diseases with their own cells is one that scientists, physicians, and those who are afflicted by such diseases find very enticing. Therapeutic cloning is a process that scientists believe has the potential to achieve such goals in the future. While therapeutic cloning brings with it a variety of potential benefits and innovations, it also carries with it a polarizing ethical conflict that poses a strong impediment to furthering such research and development. By realizing therapeutic cloning for its great potential benefits and world changing implications and disregarding any ethical considerations that may deter such advancement, the proper focus and open-mindedness necessary to achieve success in the field would be achieved. Therapeutic cloning, like all medical endeavors, includes a multitude of challenges and flaws, but no very important medical achievements come about without extensive research and continual attempts at success.
Human cloning is described as “the creation of a genetically identical copy of a human.” Although human cloning has no record of being successful, cloning was demonstrated to be possible when scientists Sir Ian Wilmut and the rest of their research team successfully cloned Dolly, a sheep (Wilmut 12). This demonstration opened up a new area of science ready to be explored. If animals can be cloned, can human beings be cloned too? If successful, scientists would be able to clone human copies and further advance modern medicine, such as using cells for regenerative medicine or harvesting organs for transplants. It is also possible that other fields of medicine and research can be furthered with this supply of human clones. Additionally, couples incapable of reproducing can pursue cloning to create an offspring with their DNA. However, human cloning has never been successful and comes with ethical concerns.The clone can suffer from abnormalities. There are also concerns regarding the treatment of embryos to gather stem cells and the treatment of clones as a person. By further investigating and analyzing this topic through the lens of Catholic moral tradition, I hope to make clear the pros and cons of the subject while also evaluating them with an ethical theory learned from this quarter in order to add to the discussion.
The topic of cloning has been a science fiction legend until Dolly, the first cloned mammal, was born in the late 1990s. Dolly’s cloning renewed the interest in the potential of human cloning as seen in science fiction. Cloning has been done since the 1950s, but every cloning experiment included problems. When cloning mice, researches can use thousands of eggs to fix errors, but human cloning cannot use the same knowledge learned from cloning cows. With human cloning there is an “…extremely high rate of death…” and chance of abnormalities that cause the ethical concern for cloning humans (Rettner).
In February 1997, it was announced that Ian Wilmut and other researchers at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, had succeeded in creating the first cloned mammal, a sheep named Dolly. A controversy quickly arose over the moral aspects of cloning, particularly regarding the issue of human cloning. Hardly any researchers have advocated human “reproductive” cloning; rather, they have generally argued for the development of human “therapeutic” cloning, which may someday yield important medical benefits. However, even this type of cloning is controversial, because the process involves the destruction of a human embryo. As this paper will show, there have been many problems and setbacks in the efforts to clone animals. In addition, recent evidence shows that it is probably impossible to clone humans with the current technology because of the way the reproductive cells in primates are designed. Thus, as this paper will argue, despite the concerns that have been expressed over human
There are some people that have been very anxious with cloning because they believe it is something new, but in reality it was introduced in the 1950s. It started with cloning food and has moved onto cloning animals. It has been successful on many different cases and a famous one is the cloning of a sheep named Dolly. Dolly lived to be six and a half years old and she had six kids. People believe that cloning should be illegal but we believe that scientists should clone endangered or extinct species in order to preserve them, here’s why.
What was once thought to be the content of fiction novels and comic books is now being fully explored and realized in the cutting edge world of modern science. Scientists now possess the necessary capabilities and technology to make the process of human cloning a reality. While this is a controversial and rather sensitive topic, cloning is an innovative practice that has the potential to vastly improve the lives of unlimited amounts of people. Although cloning may prove to be a useful remedy for many of today’s issues, there are those in the scientific and medical fields who remain vehemently opposed to its practice. It is for this reason that lawmakers, scientists, and doctors around the world are currently locked in a fierce standoff
Many ethical and moral dilemmas arise when discussing human cloning, and one can have many positions for and against each. To understand the issues surrounding human cloning, one must have a basic
The scientific community widely supports the use of cloning for practical medical research and believes it’s a one way ticket to a better lifestyle. Although the benefits of cloning are for medical purposes, it does not change the fact that the subject isn’t going to live a long healthy life and there is a possibility that the experiment will fail. "Cloning endangered species has a wildly low success rate; usually under one percent” (Vannewkirk). Even successful clones are often not able to themselves reproduce and usually live shorter than average lives” (Vannewkirk). If cloning continues to lead healthy species and organism to a shorter life span and the inability to comprehend the success rate, then cloning should not be legal, even for medical benefits. But cloning can potentially decrease the risk of death and increase the survival rates of animals, humans, and
The topic of cloning has always been very controversial in today’s society. Some people believe that cloning is unethical and should not be done, while others believe cloning is perfectly fine and should be done. Both of these views have many people supporting them and have many different reasons to prove their case.
Scientific experimentation has led us to many great discoveries such as: Chemotherapy, heart surgery, and bone marrow transplants. Recently scientists have discovered a new way to heal humans. This is known as cloning. Although they have yet to clone a human they have cloned sheep. Cloning has brought up a huge controversy among the American people. There are two sides to the story. Either you agree with cloning or you don’t. The only way to help make that decision is to look at the good and bad points of cloning.
Human cloning, long the subject of science fiction, is today a practical reality. Recent breakthroughs, most renowned the cloning of a sheep from an adult cell in Scotland in 1997, have caused the world to acknowledge that human cloning is indeed possible. Governments around the world immediately attempted to address the issue of human cloning, with varying levels of success. At the same time the pace of cloning technology continued to accelerate.
The first problem that human cloning encounter is it is one of unethical processes because it involves the alteration of the human genetic and human may be harmed, either during experimentation or by expectations after birth. “Cloning, like all science, must be used responsibly. Cloning human is not desirable. But cloning sheep has its uses.”, as quoted by Mary Seller, a member of the Church of England’s Board of Social Responsibility (Amy Logston, 1999). Meaning behind this word are showing us that cloning have both advantages and disadvantages. The concept of cloning is hurting many human sentiments and human believes. “Given the high rates of morbidity and mortality in the cloning of other mammals, we believe that cloning-to-produce-children would be extremely unsafe, and that attempts to produce a cloned child would be highly unethical”, as quoted by the President’s Council on Bioethics. Since human cloning deals with human life, it said to be unethical if people are willing to killed embryo or infant to produce a cloned human and advancing on it. The probability of this process is successful is also small because the technology that being used in this process is still new and risky.